Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria: There Is Hope

Abstract

Most of today's news about antibiotics is gloomy. Many common bacterial infections are resistant to one or more antibiotics. More ominous, there are staph bacteria in hospitals that are sensitive to only one antibiotic, vancomycin. There are also other bacteria that are resistant to vancomycin. It seems to be just a matter of time before the vancomycin-resistant genes harbored by these second bacteria are transferred to the hospital staph strains. When this happens, there will once again be human bacterial diseases that cannot be treated by modern medicine. While this is true, and very scary, there is reason for hope. It turns out that if both resistant and sensitive bacteria are present and there are no antibiotics, the sensitive bacteria outcompete the resistant ones, leaving a population of bacteria that is sensitive to antibiotics. The difference in doubling time between resistant and sensitive strains is subtle, too small to be measurable. However, what appears to be happening is the antibiotic-resistant bacteria grow slightly more slowly than the sensitive ones. This could be because they have to carry around extra genes for antibiotic resistance or because they themselves are slightly altered. For example, bacteria can become resistant to streptomycin by altering their ribosomes. While this makes them resistant to streptomycin, it also makes them slightly less efficient in synthesizing proteins which is, after all, what ribosomes are supposed to do. It is hoped, therefore, that if antibiotic use can be reduced, sensitive bacteria will once again become the dominant bacteria on the planet. As a result, antibiotics will continue to be effective weapons against dangerous and deadly bacterial diseases.